Six senators, led by Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC), are pushing for sweeping changes to the nation’s laws governing detainees and the war on terror, including one that would strip Attorney General Eric Holder and the Justice Department as a whole of the power to make decisions about where to try suspected terrorists.
The group of senators, which includes Sens. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH), Scott Brown (R-MA), Saxby Chambliss (R-GA), Joe Lieberman (I-CT), are working with Republicans on the House Armed Services Committee on a bill that would usher in comprehensive detainee policy changes and would, among other things, affirm the military’s right to detain, hold and interrogate detains at its discretion without the involvement of the Department of Justice or Holder.
“Detainees will be held in military custody unless the defense secretary determines the detainee is not of military intelligence value,” McCain said. “Our legislation addresses difficult detainee issues … and ensures that former detainees do not return to the battlefield — as approximately 25 percent of detainees released from Guantanamo have done.”
“We should hold people we capture in this war according to the law of war,” Lieberman added.
The proposed legislation, unveiled Thursday, comes in the wake of President Barack Obama’s Monday announcement of the resumption of military commission trials after a two-year self-imposed hiatus. Obama retains his desire to close the detention facility in Guantanamo Bay but political forces on Capitol Hill and within the Democratic Party have prevented him from doing so.
Unlike the House version of the bill, introduced earlier this week, the Senate version would keep Guantanamo Bay open; bar the administration from transferring detainees to foreign countries, and give the defense secretary the authority to determine where to try detainees, with military commissions being the preferred choice and civilian courts being the rare exception.
Even though the legislation would establish broad changes in detainee policy, it could attract significant Democratic support, considering Democrats’ willingness to buck Obama’s attempts to shutter Guantanamo Bay, and Holder’s decision to try Khalid Sheik Mohammed in civilian court in New York City, a move that was later reversed after prominent Democrats, including Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), vigorously opposed it.
Graham and Lieberman predicted the panel would attract strong bipartisan support, and McCain said he planned to offer the multi-layered legislation to the must-pass defense authorization bill, which usually sails through Congress.
The bill also would formally authorize use of military force against al-Qaeda, the Taliban and affiliated terrorist networks and permanently block funding for the creation or renovation of any facility in the continental United States to house detainees currently held at Guantanamo.
